Pivot
Opening & Performance Friday 07.09.2012, 20:00
Exhibition 08.09.-28.09., 18:00-22:00 Tue-Sat
Facebook Event
LEAP presents PIVOT an installation by Jacob Kirkegaard created from video and sound recordings from one of Berlin’s most important landmarks: the tv tower (Fernsehturm) at Alexanderplatz.
Inside the enormous globe at the tower’s summit, 200 meters above ground, is a rotating restaurant offering a 360° panoramic view of the city. Jacob Kirkegaard was granted a special permit to access the machinery that keeps the globe in its constant pivoting motion. Using vibration sensors, he recorded the sounds emerging from the heavy mechanical engineering – a striking contrast to the slowly and silently revolving look-out above.
For the installation at LEAP video is projected onto a curved white canvas that stretches from floor to ceiling. The curved canvas reflects the shape of the Fernsehturm’s dome and panoramic view of Berlin revealing a view of the city as seen from within the dome. Simultaneously the view from Leap’s windows reveals an up close sight of the colossal landmark, allowing for a double perspective of the city to take place.
In conveying this apparent conflict of inside/outside in an audio visual installation, PIVOT aims to de- and reconstruct a (clichéd) image of Berlin as a city “under construction” that is defined by constant change. It presents a shifting, transitory reflection of the transforming metropolis which, on the acoustic level, is being thwarted by the thunderous noises from the structure inside the tower stem. The “superficial” image is thus being exposed in its very constructed-ness.
The title of the work stands for both the literal and the metaphorical aspects of the Fernsehturm – as a tall shaft and prominent focal point, as an axis around which everything revolves, as a visual compass needle in the mental map of the city, as its Dreh- und Angelpunkt (“linchpin”).
Taking on the perspective of the landmark itself, PIVOT inverts the spectators’ immediate perception: The Fernsehturm – which is commonly looked at from below as one walks around it – is turning into the city’s “eye” as it casts its calm and distant glance all around. The audible vibration, on the other hand, shatters the surface of the material and goes direct to the very core of its underlying structure, enabling us to listen to the mechanical “heart-beat” of the metropolis.
PIVOT can be regarded as a sequel to the LOOP TOWER (2005), a sound piece that Jacob Kirkegaard created at the invitation of Ralf Christensen who was hosting the radio programme RADIUM on DR (the Danish Broadcast Corporation).
Jacob Kirkegaard is a Danish artist who focuses on the scientific and aesthetic aspects of resonance, time, sound and hearing. His installations, compositions and performances deal with acoustic spaces and phenomena that usually remain imperceptible. Using unorthodox recording tools, including accelerometers, hydrophones and home-built electromagnetic receivers, Kirkegaard captures and contextualizes hitherto unheard sounds from within a variety of environments: a geyser, a sand dune, a nuclear power plant, an empty room, a TV tower, and even sounds from the human inner ear itself.
Based in Berlin, Kirkegaard is a graduate of the Academy for Media Arts in Cologne, Germany. Since 1995, Kirkegaard has presented his works at exhibitions and at festivals and conferences throughout the world. He has released five albums (mostly on the British label Touch) and is a member of the sound art collective freq_out.
Selected exhibitions
Menil Collection (Texas, USA, Rothko Chapel (Texas, USA), James Cohan Gallery (New York, USA), Diapason Gallery (New York, USA), Swiss Institute (New York, USA), Museum of Jurassic Technology (Los Angeles, USA), Arken - Museum of Modern Art (Denmark), Medical Museion (Copenhagen, Denmark), Museum of Contemporary Art (Denmark), Moderna Museet (Stockholm, Sweden), KW (Berlin, Germany), Nimk - Nederland Museum for Media Art (Amsterdam, Holland), Kumu Art Museum (Estonia), National Centre of Contemporary Art (Kaliningrad, Russia), Centro de Arte Contemporaneo (Cordoba, Argentina), Espacio de Arte Contemporaneo (Montevideo, Uruguay), Aichi Triennale (Nagoya, Japan).
Supported by
_____________________________________________________________________
LEAP
Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance
(Berlin Carré 1. floor)
Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 13
10178 Berlin
info@leapknecht.de
www.leapknecht.de
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